Tuesday, Bulls head coach Tiago Splitter and rookie wing Dailyn Swain spoke to Bulls media during team practice, with comments that highlight Swain’s capability and appetite to play point guard minutes during the upcoming 2026-27 NBA season.
Coach Splitter on Dailyn's offensive strengths:
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) July 7, 2026
✅ Creates for others
✅ Gets into the paint
✅ Tight handles pic.twitter.com/fG13cw5ZxC
Dailyn Swain says he’s going to be on the ball quite a bit in Summer League and beyond. More on his role and the elements of his game that he’s working on pic.twitter.com/jUcFReRaS5
— Will Gottlieb (@Will_Gottlieb) July 7, 2026
There is a long way between the 2026 Las Vegas Summer League and the tip-off of the 2026-27 NBA regular season, yet the comments to the media by Splitter and Swain foreshadow what should be an inevitable competition for point guard minutes between Swain and presumed Bulls starting point guard Josh Giddey.
Giddey is a serviceable NBA player and is also nothing more than an incumbent member of a Bulls roster that Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations, Bryson Graham, inherited from his predecessor Arturas Karnisovas. It is reasonable to expect the Splitter and Graham braintrust to project a critical eye on Bulls players they didn’t personally bring into the organization.
In the case of Giddey, he should be prepared for stiff competition from Swain because there are NBA point guard attributes that Giddey may be able to deliver relative to Tiago Splitter’s basketball principles, while at the same time carrying basketball liabilities that may become an early obstacle to Bryson Graham’s rebuild.
Projecting a Giddey v. Swain PG battle
No Bulls fan should expect an immediate change in Josh Giddey’s standing as the Bulls' starting point guard, barring a drastic offseason trade.
However, there are elements of Giddey’s game that should be scrutinized as Dailyn Swain receives real NBA game reps, starting in Las Vegas, progressing through training camp and the preseason, and ultimately evaluating Swain’s progress in the first 20 games of the NBA regular season.
Competition objective number one should obviously be an evaluation of whether the Bulls' team turnovers can be reduced by giving Swain a share of point guard minutes.
Giddey has the dubious distinction of being the Bulls' team leader in turnovers for the 2025-26 NBA season with 3.6 turnovers per game, according to Basketball Reference. Certainly, Giddey’s turnover performance wielded influence over the Bulls’ bottom-tier NBA ranking of 23rd in team turnovers (15.3 turnovers per game) for the 2025-26 NBA regular season.
Aside from turnovers, the ability to draw fouls should be another data point that factors into a point guard minutes competition between Giddey and Swain.
Josh Giddey averaged 4.2 free-throw attempts per game for the 2025-26 NBA season, which ranks outside the top-50 NBA players for that statistic according to Basketball Reference, and does not come close to the free-throw drawing abilities of elite NBA point guards such as Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or the Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Doncic, as examples.
Swain, on the other hand, demonstrated a tremendous talent for getting to the free-throw line in his NCAA men’s basketball career, so it will be an interesting Bulls storyline to see if Swain’s college foul-drawing dominance of the paint can translate to the NBA.
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